First and foremost in the struggle against opportunism, which in 1914 finally developed into social-chauvinism, finally went over to the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. This was, naturally, the principal enemy of Bolshevism within the workers' movement. This enemy remains the principal one on an international scale. Bolshevism devoted and devotes the most attention to this enemy. This aspect of the activity of the Bolsheviks is now already fairly well known abroad.

It is another matter with respect to another enemy of Bolshevism within the workers' movement. Abroad there is still far too little knowledge of the fact that Bolshevism grew, took shape, and steeled itself in prolonged struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionariness, which resembles anarchism or borrows something from it, which retreats in any essential respect from the conditions and requirements of a consistent proletarian class struggle. Theoretically, for Marxists it is entirely established—and fully confirmed by the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements—that the petty proprietor, the petty businessman (a social type having very broad, mass representation in many European countries), experiencing constant oppression under capitalism and very often an incredibly sharp and rapid deterioration of life and ruin, easily passes into extreme revolutionariness, but is incapable of displaying steadfastness, organization, discipline, and firmness. The petty bourgeois, "maddened" by the horrors of capitalism—this is a social phenomenon characteristic, like anarchism, of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionariness, its fruitlessness, its capacity to rapidly transform into submissiveness, apathy, fantasy, even into "frenzied" infatuation with one or another bourgeois "fashionable" trend—all this is well known. But theoretical, abstract recognition of these truths by no means frees revolutionary parties from old mistakes, which always arise unexpectedly, in somewhat new form, in previously unseen garb or surroundings, in an original—more or less original—setting.

Anarchism frequently appeared as a kind of punishment for opportunistic sins of the workers' movement. Both deformities mutually supplemented each other. And if in Russia, despite its more petty-bourgeois composition of population compared with European countries, anarchism enjoyed relatively negligible influence during both revolutions (1905 and 1917) and during the period of preparation for them, this is undoubtedly partly to be credited to Bolshevism, which always waged the most merciless and uncompromising struggle against opportunism. I say "partly" because an even more important role in weakening anarchism in Russia was played by the fact that it had the opportunity in the past (the 1870s of the nineteenth century) to develop extraordinarily luxuriantly and to demonstrate conclusively its falsity, its unsuitability as a guiding theory for the revolutionary class.

When Bolshevism arose in 1903, it inherited the tradition of merciless struggle with petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchistic (or capable of flirting with anarchism) revolutionariness, which tradition had always existed in revolutionary social-democracy and became especially firmly established in our movement during 1900–1903, when the foundations were being laid for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia. Bolshevism inherited and continued the struggle with the party that most expressed the tendencies of petty-bourgeois revolutionariness, namely with the party of the "Socialist-Revolutionaries," on three principal points. First, this party, rejecting Marxism, stubbornly refused (or rather, it would be more accurate to say: was unable) to understand the necessity of a strictly objective accounting of class forces and their mutual relationships before any political action. Second, this party saw its special "revolutionariness" or "leftism" in its recognition of individual terror, assassinations, which we Marxists decisively rejected. Of course, we rejected individual terror only on grounds of expediency, but people who would be capable of "principally" condemning the terror of the great French revolution or in general terror on the part of a victorious revolutionary party besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world—such people were already subjected to ridicule and spitting upon by Plekhanov in 1900–1903, when Plekhanov was a Marxist and a revolutionary. Third, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries" saw "leftism" in sniggering over the relatively minor opportunistic sins of German social-democracy while at the same time imitating the extreme opportunists of this same party on such questions as, for example, the agrarian question or the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. History, let me say in passing, has now given on a grand, world-historical scale confirmation of the opinion which we always upheld, namely, that revolutionary German social-democracy (note that even Plekhanov in 1900–1903 demanded the expulsion of Bernstein from the party, and the Bolsheviks, continuing this tradition, in 1913 exposed all the baseness, vileness, and treachery of Legin{11})—that revolutionary German social-democracy came closest to being the kind of party that was needed for the revolutionary proletariat to achieve victory. Now, in 1920, after all the shameful collapses and crises of the period of war and the first years after the war, it is clearly evident that of all the Western parties it was precisely the German revolutionary social-democracy that produced the best leaders, and also recovered, healed, and strengthened itself anew before the others. This is evident both from the Spartacist party{12} and from the left, proletarian wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which conducts an unwavering struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of Kautsky, Hilferding, Ledebour, Crispien. If one now casts an overall glance at a completely concluded historical period, namely: from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic, there emerges a completely definite and unquestionable outline of the general relationship of Marxism to anarchism. Marxism turned out to be correct in the end, and if anarchists justly pointed to the opportunistic character of the views on the state held by the majority of socialist parties, then, in the first place, this opportunism was connected with a distortion and even direct concealment of Marx's views on the state (in my book "The State and Revolution" I noted that Bebel for 36 years, from 1875 to 1911, kept hidden under a bushel a letter from Engels{13} which exposed with particular vividness, sharpness, directness, and clarity the opportunism of the commonplace social-democratic views on the state[2]); secondly, the correction of these opportunistic views, the recognition of Soviet power and its superiority over bourgeois parliamentary democracy—all this proceeded most rapidly and widely precisely from the depths of the most Marxist currents within European and American socialist parties.

In two cases the struggle of Bolshevism against "left" deviations of its own party assumed especially large proportions: in 1908 over the question of participation in the most reactionary "parliament" and in legal workers' societies surrounded by the most reactionary laws, and in 1918 (the Brest Peace{14}) over the question of the permissibility of this or that kind of "compromise."

In 1908, "left" Bolsheviks were expelled from our party for stubborn refusal to understand the necessity of participation in the most reactionary "parliament."{15} The "left"—among whom were many excellent revolutionaries who subsequently with honor became (and continue to be) members of the communist party—relied especially on the successful experience of the boycott in 1905. When the Tsar in August 1905 announced the convocation of an advisory "parliament,"{16} the Bolsheviks declared a boycott of it—against all opposition parties and against the Mensheviks—and the October revolution of 1905{17} indeed swept it away. Then the boycott proved to be correct not because it was correct in general to refrain from participation in reactionary parliaments, but because it correctly took into account the objective situation which was leading to the rapid transformation of mass strikes into a political and then a revolutionary strike and then into an uprising. Moreover, the struggle at that time was over whether to leave in the hands of the Tsar the convocation of the first representative body or to attempt to wrest this convocation from the hands of the old power. Insofar as there was no certainty and could be no certainty of an analogous objective situation, and likewise of the same direction and tempo of its development, to that extent the boycott ceased to be correct. The Bolshevik boycott of the "parliament" in 1905 greatly enriched the revolutionary proletariat with extremely valuable political experience, demonstrating that with a combination of legal and illegal, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of struggle it is sometimes useful and even obligatory to know how to refrain from parliamentary participation. But blind, imitative, uncritical transfer of this experience to other conditions, into a different situation, is a grave error. It was an error, though a small one, easily correctable,[3] already the boycott of the Duma by the Bolsheviks in 1906. It was an extremely serious and hard-to-correct error, the boycott in 1907, 1908, and subsequent years, when, on the one hand, one could not expect very rapid growth of the revolutionary wave and its transformation into an uprising, and when, on the other hand, the necessity of combining legal and illegal work followed from the entire historical situation of the reformed bourgeois monarchy. Now, when one looks back on a completely concluded historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has fully revealed itself, it becomes especially clear that the Bolsheviks could not have maintained (not to mention: strengthened, developed, intensified) a firm nucleus of the revolutionary party of the proletariat in 1908–1914 if they had not fought most rigorously for the obligatoriness of combining with illegal forms of struggle the forms of legal work, with obligatory participation in the most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions surrounded by reactionary laws (insurance funds, etc.).

In 1918 the matter did not come to a split. The "left" communists formed at that time only a special group or "faction" within our party and not for long. In that same year the most prominent representatives of "left communism," for example, comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly acknowledged their error. It seemed to them that the Brest Peace was principally impermissible and harmful to the party of the revolutionary proletariat—a compromise with imperialists. It was indeed a compromise with imperialists, but precisely such a one and in such circumstances as were obligatory.

At the present time, when I hear attacks on our tactics in signing the Brest Peace from, for example, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries," or when I hear a remark made by comrade Lansbury in a conversation with me: "our English trade-union leaders say that compromises are permissible for them, if they were permissible for the Bolsheviks," I usually answer first of all with a simple and "popular" comparison:

Imagine that armed bandits stopped your automobile. You give them money, passport, revolver, automobile. You obtain relief from the pleasant company of bandits. There is a compromise, undoubtedly. "Do ut des" ("I give" you money, weapons, automobile, "so that you give" me the opportunity to go away unharmed). But it is hard to find a sane person who would declare such a compromise "principally impermissible" or would declare the person who concluded such a compromise a partner of the bandits (although the bandits, having sat in the automobile, could use it and the weapons for new robberies). Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was similar to such a compromise.

But when the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemannists (and to a considerable extent the Kautskyists) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (not to mention messrs. Renner and Co.) in Austria, Renaudel and Longuet and Co. in France, the Fabians, "Independents" and "Laborites"{18} in England concluded in 1914–1918 and in 1918–1920 compromises with the bandits of their own, and sometimes "allied," bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat of their countries, then all these gentlemen acted as partners of banditry.

The conclusion is clear: to deny compromises "principally," to deny any permissibility of compromises whatsoever, of any kind, is childishness which is hard to take seriously. A politician wishing to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to single out concrete cases of precisely such compromises as are impermissible, in which opportunism and treachery are expressed, and direct all the force of criticism, all the edge of merciless exposure and uncompromising war against these concrete compromises, not allowing the highly experienced "practical" socialists and parliamentary Jesuits to evade and shirk responsibility through discourse about "compromises in general." The English "leaders" of trade unions, as well as the Fabian society and the "Independent" Labour Party, do precisely this in shirking responsibility for the treachery they have committed, for the compromise they have made, which indeed means the worst opportunism, betrayal, and treachery.

There are compromises and compromises. One must be able to analyze the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise or each variety of compromises. One must learn to distinguish between a man who gave bandits money and weapons in order to diminish the evil caused by the bandits and to ease the task of capturing and shooting them, and a man who gives bandits money and weapons in order to participate in dividing the bandits' booty. In politics this is far from always as easy as in a childishly-simple example. But whoever wished to invent for the workers such a recipe as would provide ready-made solutions for all contingencies or who promised that in the politics of the revolutionary proletariat there would be no difficulties and no tangled situations, such a person would simply be a charlatan.

So as not to leave room for misinterpretation, let me try to sketch, however briefly, several basic propositions for the analysis of concrete compromises.

The party that concluded a compromise with German imperialists consisting in the signing of the Brest Peace was working out its internationalism in deed from the end of 1914. It was not afraid to proclaim the defeat of the Tsarist monarchy and to brand "defense of the fatherland" in a war between two imperialist predators. The parliamentary deputies of this party went to Siberia instead of along the path leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution, which overthrew tsarism and created a democratic republic, gave this party a new and supreme test: it made no concessions to "its own" imperialists, but prepared their overthrow and overthrew them. Having seized political power, this party left no stone upon stone of either landed or capitalist property. Having published and repudiated the secret treaties of the imperialists, this party offered peace to all peoples and submitted to the violence of the Brest predators only after the Anglo-French imperialists had wrecked the peace, and only after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to speed up revolution in Germany and other countries. The complete correctness of such a compromise, concluded by such a party in such circumstances, becomes clearer and more evident every day to everyone.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like all the leaders of the Second International throughout the world in 1914–1920) began with treachery, justifying directly or indirectly "defense of the fatherland," that is, defense of their plundering bourgeoisie. They continued their treachery by entering into coalition with the bourgeoisie of their country and fighting together with their bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat of their country. Their bloc first with Kerensky and the Cadets, then with Kolchak and Denikin in Russia, as well as the bloc of their foreign-minded comrades with the bourgeoisie of their countries, was a transition to the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Their compromise with the bandits of imperialism consisted from beginning to end in making themselves partners of imperialist banditry.